K2’s KB001200 release

Since the release of K2 4.5 back in April, it’s been a bit quite of time before we got something new. We’ve seen the K2 components for SharePoint 2010 been release, but that didn’t bring any new functionality to the table. For those who don’t know, it “only” provides the same functionality of the SharePoint 2007 components. This doesn’t mean guys in South Africa have only been watching the worldcup, they’ve been working on a beauty called the 1200 series, which starts with the KB001200 update release.

In other 1200 releases (KB001230 and KB001260), we’ll see new functionality being added. This will be in the form of new features on the UI side, new Inline Functions, Wizards and Service Broker Objects.
So, what does the KB001200 release have:

• New installer
• Single sign-on for Workspace UI
• Document Management Inline functions – Included in BlackPoint
• Dynamic SQL Service Object
• Workflow Client Services
• Updated Create Item wizard – Included in BlackPoint

I’m going to jump into a few of the once I find the most interesting.

New Installer

Huh, again? Yes, again. The installer has not changed a lot. It has some new things to lay the foundation for the 1200 series. So, don’t expect a big change, you’ll still have that nice 4.5 feeling when you install the product. What is new, it includes the VS2010 extension and the K2 Components for SharePoint 2010.

Document Management Inline Functions

The 4.5 release brought us Inline Functions. In this post you can see what that is and read why it’s so important. K2 is now expanding the current list of inline functions to allow some document management functions. Below is a list of functions you’ll get.

Get Word Content

This allows you to get the content of a content control in word. Content Controls in word are useful for forms and getting data a bit more structured in a word document. Having the option to get the value of such a control allows you to make business decisions based on what a user entered in the word document/form.

Example of GetWordContent being used.

Get Cell

The Inline Function that started as a K2 underground blackmarket project. A good example of K2 looking what the field uses and then adding it to the product features. Some might think this is an easy way to add value, but don’t forget that because it’s in the product, it’s now supported and maintained by SourceCode. With the community stuff, you’re on your own. The function allows you to get the value of a given cell in an excel sheet.

Get Cell with Input

Roughly the same as the above, but it allows you to change a value in a cell, recalculate the workbook and return the information from a different cell. It uses Excel Services to calculate the workbook.

Get Range

Returns an array of values from the cells that have been specified. It looks at the first column if the range includes multiple columns.

Get Range with Input

See a trend here? Get Cell -> Get Cell with Input. Get Range -> Get Range with Input. It does the same as Get Cell with Input, but now with a range.

Example of GetRangeWithInput being used

Dynamic SQL Service Object

Way back in the RTM timeframe, the awesome Seb Garrioch created the Dynamic SQL Service Object. The labs team has updated it a bit and included it in the (supported!) product. What it does? It allows you to use Microsoft SQL tables, stored procedures and views as the base of your SmartObjects. We already got this in 4.5, but you had to create the SmartObject yourself. In this release, a niceUI has been added to SharePoint 2010 for you to create and manage the SmartObjects.

Create a Dynamic SQL SmartObject from the UI

Workflow Client Services

K2 is slowly creating WS/WCF/REST services for a lot of their API’s. The other 1200 series releases will have some more goodness for that. This KB001200 release features the ability to start and participate in workflow. It basically is the web serviced version of the SourceCode.Workflow.Client assembly. It will not feature everything, since it’s a bit hard to get all those API calls into a web services, but you’ll be able to complete tasks, get worklist information, start processes and more. The different endpoints support different functionality, with WCF being the one with the most features. The others (REST and old-fasion-asp.net web services) have less features, but that’s logical because you simply can’t specify a full ProcessInstance via REST. This KB001200 release will only have the Workflow Client Services, the other releases of the 1200 series will include more. Expect a full article on all the web services later…

Updated Create Item Wizard

When you build K2 workflows that are linked to a SharePoint site, you’re able to create items in that site. This updated wizard allows you to create those items in a different site/site collection then the one you’ve bind the workflow too.

Conclusion

I’m happy to see K2 is moving forward and expanding the functional artifects of K2, it shows how important the 4.5 release was and that is truly is the foundation for more things to come. A lot of new items are things you would be able to create yourself using SmartObjects or Inline Functions. K2 is simply adding them to the product which makes the OOTB experience better and it’s becoming a more complete product.

Thanks to Holly for the help and screenshots…

K2′s 4.5 RC is here.

Nearly every SharePoint blog is reporting on the release date of SharePoint 2010. You might have not noticed that K2 has released the RC version of the all important 4.5 :)
The RC version is available via the K2 Portal site under the beta download section. This also means it’s only available for the current partners, customers and insiders.

Here are the main enhancements (copied from the release notes):

1. New support for:
• Windows Server 2008, including R2
• SQL Server 2008
• Visual Studio 2008
2. Non- AD Installation
3. SSL Support
4. Inline Functions
5. Reports
• New filters and parameters
• Using SmartObject direct execution functionality
6. Performance enhancements to SmartObjects and the K2 Workflow Server
7. In MOSS/WSS K2 configuration Features are deployed as solutions
8. K2 Designer for SharePoint enhancements include:
• Inline Functions
• SmartObject Filters
• Custom Work Item Notification
• Process Data Fields
• New Wizards
9. Internationalization of the codebase
10. Numerous documentation updates
11. Inclusion of all Updates

For more info, here are some links:
K2 Underground 4.5 RC Forum

Registration form for What’s new to K2 4.5

Check out the K2 Event Calendar for other webinars and events.

Jey’s report on the release!

PeteStilGoe.com’s post on 4.5

The new K2.com website showing 4.5 info!

More URL’s coming…

K2′s 4.5 Release – Inline Functions

Last October I had the privilege to visit the K2 Insiders conference. We all got to see a preview of K2′s new 4.5 release. Now (finally!) a targeted beta is available for selected partners, customers and insiders. This blog post will focus on Inline functions, a new feature of the 4.5 release which will be available for K2 blackpoint 4.5 and K2 blackpearl 4.5. The new release also features improvements to the designers, as you can read in Jey’s blogpost.

Why are inline functions so important?

To explain why inline functions are so important for K2, it is needed to provide some background. Way back before the South African development team started working on K2 blackpearl, a vision was created on how to design processes from a business perspective. The current K2 architecture has a lot of features that can be mapped to that vision. An example of this is SmartObjects. The vision shows that (enterprise) data should not be included/part of the process and should be referred from within the process. SmartObjects do just that, making live a lot easier when working with the K2 platform.

Another big part of the vision is to allow you to design processes without the need to write code. A lot of processes can be implemented without code, but I’ve had lots of occasions where I still needed to write small pieces of code. Within the new K2 designer for SharePoint and K2 studio, you’re unable to write code and you’re stuck going back to Visual Studio. This isn’t how K2′s vision was created and so a solution was needed to reduce the use of code and allow you to call (simple) functions.

What are inline functions?

Every wizard within K2 uses input fields where you can drag and drop items from the Object Browser to the input fields. Inline functions allow you to call simple functions inside those input fields. The functions are categorized in groups, so all the Date and Time functions are together and all the Text manipulation functions are together. A complete list of inline functions will be listed in the product documentation which will also be up on the knowledge base site. For now, you can check this blog post.

So, why is this so good?  Well, as stated in the previous paragraph, this will allow you to do more with the designers that do not support the use of code.

How do they work?

This youtube video will hopefully explain how you use inline functions while designing a process.

From a technical perspective, inline functions are executed within the workflow server.

[UPDATE] I forgot to share the video for the public, it should be better now :-)

But, the function I need isn’t there!

Ok, K2 can’t provide you with every function thinkable on the planet, but they always provide you with ways to extend the K2 platform. This is also the case with inline function! In the end, it all comes down to a simple .NET assembly with some class and method attributes. The developer reference will have an article/how-to on this.

Conclusion

I hope this blog post makes you understand how valuable inline functions can be when designing a process. For myself, it’s another way of doing things and allows me to create processes more easy and (in a lot of occasions) without code!